Copyright Vladimir Kagan January 9, 2011
Last year I wrote about the impressive Palm Beach Opera Company and their outstanding performances. This love affair had been rekindled last month with their bold production of Nabucco, an opera so complicated that it is seldom performed, but this gem of a company dared where angels fear to tread. It was a heroic presentation with a chorus of 100 singers and star performers imported from the Met, Teatro alla Scala, Oper Leipzig, Beyerische Staatsoper and The National Theater Prague.
This Saturday, we saw The Met: Live in HD in the auditorium of Palm Beach’s esteemed Society of The Four Arts…. What a way to see opera! (For years we hesitated giving up the live experience for a movie screen… but what a wonderful trade-off). Transmitted to theaters via 13 high-definition cameras with close-up images of the performer’s amazing talents that not even a front row orchestra seat could duplicate. A frontal view of the conductor as only the orchestra’s musicians sees him… The amazing, super-human task of behind the scene set changes, timed to within seconds of the scheduled intermission. (You can also understand why it takes a 20-minute intermission…. the work is colossal: breaking down and setting up. It happens seamlessly, a well-greased feat happening before your eyes with hardly a word spoken. You begin to understand the vast cost of a production (less than 50% is covered by ticket sales)…. And then you are treated to fascinating interviews with the performers as they come off the stage and out of their characters as well as conversations with the conductor, the director and the back-stage persona. You discover the human side of each artist that escapes you when you “meet” them only in a curtain call. (It is also an incredible value: ours tickets cost $22 each compared to the hundreds of dollars for a live performance)… It is truly an every-man experience available to a much greater audience.
The dashing Giacomo Puccini
This week’s matinee was Giacomo Puccini’s La Fanciulla Del West. (Have you ever heard of it? We hadn’t… Would we normally have gone to hear it… a very likely NO)…. but the televised experience lured us into giving up a perfectly beautiful afternoon in the sun for a much too air-conditioned theater… and we did not regret it.
This is a funky piece of work, which takes place during the Gold Rush in California circa 1849. It is a sentimental Victorian pastiche, first produced at the Met in 1910 with Enrico Caruso playing the lover, Arturo Toscanini conducting and Puccini in the audience… It was a huge success!
Puccini was known for his exotic Opera settings such as Japan for Madame Butterfly, Paris for La Bohème and Flanders for Edgar. On an earlier visit to New York, Puccini became infatuated with tales of the Wild West and surely had seen the popular musical, The Girl of the Golden West. This was the catalyst to develop his theme for a rough and tumble opera with cowboy hats, barroom brawls and a “love will triumph” operatic finale. The Met’s production, with its very authentic sets, was full of Wild West bravado, soaring arias from the second-floor balcony in the Polka Saloon and included nine live horses on the set…. You didn't have to be an opera fan to enjoy the quality of the camera work, the authentic settings, the direction and performances.
Scenes from the Metropolitan Opera production of La Fanciulla del West, designed by Michael Scott: the Polka Saloon
© Beatriz Schiller 2011
The miners at the hanging place near the camp
© Johan Elbers 2011
Truthfully, there is not an Aria that is familiar, but Deborah Voigt was magnificent in the roll of Mimi, a bible-preaching Saloon owner. Her protagonist, Lucio Gallo was a very believable tough gambling sheriff and Marcello Giordani, a little too rotund, was her dashing bandito lover… Of course, if you want a good laugh, all you need is a Western sung in Italian by a largely Italian cast… Seeing it in HD however, is worth trading an afternoon in the sun.
As a casual Opera aficionado, I urge you to take in one of these amazing performances. If you are a serious Opera fan, the Met needs your support. Go to www.metopera.org and see their schedule of upcoming performances and make a contribution.
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